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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200018">in the woods somewhere</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents'>darlingargents</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Getting Together, Horror, M/M, Post-IT (2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:29:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27200018</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a monster in the woods.</p><p>Eddie goes looking for it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>75</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fic In A Box</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in the woods somewhere</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/gifts">Mere_Mortifer</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Eternal thanks to S, E, H, and C for cheerleading, handholding, and appropriate threatening.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Eddie thinks he has a perfectly healthy relationship with rumours in Derry. Most of the time, the girl who allegedly slept with half the football team just pissed off the wrong quarterback’s girlfriend; most of the time, if someone died under mysterious circumstances that no one will discuss, something interesting actually did happen there. Probably worse than the most twisted depths of the average Derry resident’s imagination — although, this is Derry, so that is pretty damn twisted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rumours of a werewolf stalking the woods of Derry seems to fall much closer to the “true” end of that spectrum.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Massive pawprints on the edge of the woods in the days around the full moon. An uptick in unusually gory animal remains. People talking about howling on full moon nights. Sure, it all seems very… on the nose, but after Eddie started hearing the rumours, he hunted down Bev to ask what she’d heard, and she pointed him to Jenna Kinney, who told him what she’d seen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me and Brad,” Jenna said, touching up her lip gloss in her locker mirror and fluffing her ponytail, “we were making out in the woods, right? Sure, it’s dangerous if there’s serial killers or whatever, but it’s not like we were going into the mountains, we could still see the lights from the road. So we’re up against a tree and Brad is kissing my neck, and I hear this like, snuffling? And I open my eyes and I shit you not, there’s a fucking wolf.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How could you tell?” Eddie asked. He wasn’t physically taking notes, maintaining the illusion that this was a casual conversation, but he would take some after they finished. “It was pretty dark, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Told you, we could still see the light from the road. It was enough for shadows. And it was this massive hulking black wolf, and its eyes were glowing. Like, right in my face. It was so scary. And when it saw me looking, it stood up on its hind legs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How tall was it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Taller than me or Brad. Like, seven feet?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sure. “And then what happened?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I screamed. What else was I going to do? Brad detached from my neck and turned around, and the wolf got back down on all fours and ran away. He didn’t see the eyes or how tall it was, but he saw the wolf too, I’m serious. You can ask him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Eddie did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, it was like two or three yards away,” Brad said when Eddie caught him outside the school at the end of the day. “I was… distracted,” he added, his eyes going a bit glossy like he was falling into a memory. “But I heard it, right? I thought it was just Jenna, this heavy breathing, but that was probably because I was distracted, because she doesn’t sound like that. And obviously she wasn’t behind me, which is where the sound was coming from. When she screamed I heard like, this little whine like a dog that just got kicked, and when I turned around I saw it getting down on all fours and running away.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How big was it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Massive, dude. Like ten feet long.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie wondered how many times he’d told the story, and how many times the wolf had increased in size with retellings. “And it just ran away?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Right into the woods. And Jenna was freaked out and wouldn’t let me — well. We were done making out in the woods for the night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not forever?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Brad shrugged, and grabbed his bike helmet, clipping it under his chin. He was wearing gloves, too, which was probably a good idea. November was bringing freezing wind and rain, and Eddie was pretty sure the snow will fall and stick pretty soon. “This is Derry, man. If you stop living for every time something fucked up happens, you won’t get to live at all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Words of wisdom, Eddie supposed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That initial research led to the library. Eddie’s never been one for book research, but this has caught enough of his attention to make him go for it. There weren’t many historical resources on werewolves — no surprise there — but there were some local histories of strange events. He struck gold two books in: a chapter on the Man-Wolf, stalking the Derry woods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Typical werewolf lore, as it turned out, but more specific. A story of some early Derry residents in the 1800s being stalked by a transforming killer, and killing it with fire and silver bullets. And another man-wolf a couple decades later, this time allegedly turned back human by his lover going to the woods with something beloved to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And checking out the microfiches of recent newspapers was very informative as well. As it turns out, mysterious animal deaths in the woods of Derry where people were torn apart and not actually consumed are strangely common. And they tend to cluster around the full moon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s all very fascinating. In Derry, it really seems like all the stories are true.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie started doing track in his junior year. He told his mom that he had set up a study group at the library as an explanation for getting home late three days a week, and she’d bought it, until the final race of the year where he’d won the 500 yard dash. She’d seen the picture of him in the newspaper, grinning into the camera and holding up his trophy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As far as she knew, he’d been spending that Saturday at the library.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The screaming match after that went on for hours. She’d alternated between sobbing fits, shrieking, and complete emotional shutdown. At one point, she’d pulled out the phone and told Eddie that she was going to call and tell them he was hallucinating and that he was dangerous so that they could: “Put you somewhere safe and take care of you. It’s not even a lie, you’re self-harming, Eddie-bear. You wouldn’t do something your mama told you was wrong unless you wanted to get hurt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d ripped the phone cord out of the wall, and the fight had continued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, she’d just broken down sobbing, unable to keep talking, and Eddie had left the house. It was Monday night, and the fight had started when he got home from school — usually a track practice day, but they had the week off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was almost midnight by the time Eddie left the house, so hungry he could eat an entire buffet, and with nothing but his wallet. There was nowhere he would go but Richie’s house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie hadn’t said a word when he’d opened the door and seen Eddie. For once, he’d seen the look on Eddie’s face, and left it alone. When Richie’s dad saw him, he’d had a little less awareness, and asked him how his victory was treating him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mom’s not happy about it,” Eddie had managed, and Richie had chimed in to tell Went that Eddie was staying over. He’d ended up staying almost a week.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he finally went home, they hadn’t talked about it. They’d reached a tense, silent state of agreement to not talk about it, and Eddie still did track next year and dutifully swallowed down his medicine. Sugar pills crunching between his molars, syrupy-sweet tonics coating the inside of his mouth with a medical taste. They make his head ache sometimes, he thinks. During the week he was with Richie, his head was clearer than it had been in ages, and his skin sometimes felt like it was tingling with possibility.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wonders, sometimes, what he would be if he didn’t have the medicine. Dragging him down underwater like fish hooks in his ankles, his arm stretching just far enough for his fingers to breach the waves and reach freedom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows it’s not real, but he still wonders, sometimes.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Doing track has made Eddie better than he’s ever been before. He’s always known he’s strong and fast, but the training, painful as it was, has brought him to new levels. He’s done a few five-mile runs. Once, he got up early on a Sunday and ran ten miles on his own, through the best-maintained paths in the woods. He’d never felt more like he belonged in his own skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So when Eddie decides to spend the night of a full moon looking for a werewolf, he’s not actually very worried. The full moon provides enough light to see by, and Eddie knows these woods and knows he can run. He’s armed with silver bullets and a gun, both of which he found in his attic. He doesn’t know a lot about his dad, but now he wonders if his dad was anything like him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Frank Kaspbrak fought monsters in Derry, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie supposes he’s never going to know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This full moon is on a Saturday night. Eddie had considered asking someone if they wanted to come along — Richie or Bev, probably, none of the other Losers tend to go along with his wildest plans — but Bev was working on college applications and so stressed that she went into immediate defensive mode whenever anyone implied she could take a break. And Richie… well, Richie has been weird lately. Since their week together, really, he’d been keeping a bit of distance between them. Not always physical — he still grabs Eddie’s shoulder and pokes his ribs to be annoying — but emotional, and it’s enough that Eddie feels a little weird around him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Best to go at it alone, really.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gun, loaded with silver bullets and the safety on, carefully tucked into his belt. The biggest and brightest flashlight he could find. A water bottle hooked to his belt. A glowing watch. A map of the forest with a few spots highlighted to check out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Eddie is waiting for his mother to fall asleep, fully dressed under the covers, he wonders why he’s not afraid. It’s not like the history he’s read was all feel-good stories of triumph: there’s plenty of graphically described murder. But for whatever reason, the idea of the wolf doesn’t scare him at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At half-past midnight, Eddie opens his bedroom window, oiled to silence, and climbs out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night is cloudless and crisp, a perfect autumnal October night before the snow falls and blankets the earth for the next few months. Leaves crunch under his feet as he makes his way to the back fence and ducks out into the alleyway. The full moon illuminates his path, harsh shadows following him as he walks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the perfect night for a horror movie. Eddie’s imagination is full of masked killers with kitchen knives and vampires with sharp teeth jumping out of the shadows. It feels just like a horror movie, too: only scary in theory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It only takes Eddie a few minutes to get to the edge of the woods from his house. The forest is much, much darker, and Eddie pauses for a moment at the edge to pull out his map and flashlight. He knows, vaguely, where he’s going first, so he only gives the map a brief check before folding it back up and shoving it back into the back pocket of his jeans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He steps into the woods, and is swallowed by the dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His feet find the path, and he begins to walk, the beam of his flashlight bouncing across the ground. He avoids lifting it to scan the trees — he has an idea that would be more visible. There are lots of techniques he learned in track for controlling his breathing, and he does it as he walks, keeping his breaths long and steady and quiet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All around him are the faint sounds of the forest: scuffling feet, the occasional burrowing or flap of wings. Nothing that sounds especially large. At one point, his sweeping flashlight hits hooves, and he lifts it to see a deer standing in his path. A buck, with a massive set of bone-white antlers. Its eyes flash in the light of Eddie’s flashlight, and its nose twitches disdainfully before bounding off silently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie continues, the forest waking up around him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After maybe ten more minutes, he’s coming up to the spot that he’s marked down to check. One of the stories from ten years or so ago: a hiker, a young man, found with his guts ripped out and leaning up against a tree. There had even been a picture, small and black-and-white in the newspaper, and Eddie hasn’t been able to stop picturing the glassy, dead eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tree in question is massive, easily taller than almost any other tree in the area, an old and gnarled oak. Eddie shines his flashlight against the roots, and for a moment, he swears he can see blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not real, of course it’s not real, but it makes a shiver go down his spine anyway. He reaches for the gun with his left hand, his sweat-slick palm slipping off the handle. He wipes it on his jeans and grabs the handle again, holding the cold metal until it warms in his hand and he can’t see the blood anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Eddie finally can breathe again without wanting his inhaler, he points his flashlight away from the tree, and around the surrounding trees and bushes. It’s a pretty standard part of the forest, really, just a small clearing. Nothing special.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s about to give up and move on when he hears a howl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not like an ordinary wolf howl — or at least, Eddie doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span> it is. It’s louder and more resonant and he can feel it in his bones, even though he’s pretty sure it’s at least a couple miles away. Louder and more mournful. It goes on and on and Eddie can feel tears coming to his eyes, somehow. The werewolf, whoever they are, is very, very sad.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What the fuck?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie stumbles backwards, against that same ancient oak, and tries to recover his breath as the howl fades. He can’t hear the wolf itself, but he knows it’s running, trying to find a meal. Or avoid finding a meal. It’s not like he has any way of knowing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, the looming shadows don’t seem quite so innocent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of Eddie’s logic is telling him to run. All of his instincts are saying that, too — but in the opposite direction. To find the wolf. His heart is pounding and he’s breathing so hard that he’s lightheaded, and all he wants to do is run deeper into the forest.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Find the wolf.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie forgets the map. He ignores his plans. He runs, the paths under his feet barely visible, tree branches hitting him and cutting his skin. He doesn’t care.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>One of the nights that Eddie was at Richie’s house, he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned on the guest bed, the light of the nearly-full moon leaking in through the window and as bright as a spotlight to his exhausted eyes. Eventually, after an hour or two of lying there awake, he got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water, and found Richie there, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been a strange, quiet moment of recognition. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You, too?</span>
  </em>
  <span> he’d asked with his eyes as Richie blinked at him over a bowl of cereal. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Richie had responded with a shrug. Eddie had grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and Richie had moved out of the way of the sink so he could fill it with water, and they’d stood there in companionable silence, their mutual insomnia tying them together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Eddie had finished his water, he’d put the glass in the dishwasher. He’s spent enough time at the Tozier house to know just how Maggie and Went like the dishes to be loaded. He probably should have just gone back to bed and left Richie there with his cereal and his thoughts, but he hadn’t. He’d just looked at Richie, who was looking at him, and who looked so much younger without his glasses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In that moment, in the middle of the night, they felt like the only people in the world. Anything could’ve happened. Eddie could’ve told him any secret, and he thinks Richie could’ve done the same. Eddie could have kissed him, maybe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t. But when Richie finished his cereal and left the bowl in the sink — Eddie could already hear Maggie gently berating him while knowing he would never change — Eddie had gone up to him and hugged him. They didn’t do this. They were friends, they were boys, they didn’t do this girl shit. They never had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he’d pressed his ear into Richie’s chest and listened to the pounding of his heart, steady and comforting, and Richie had wrapped his arms around him a moment later. It was the opposite of when his mother hugged him. It made him feel safe and contained in his body, like he could do anything when he pulled away. Like the closeness would stay even after they stopped touching.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Eddie went back to bed, he fell asleep with only enough time to wonder if Richie was doing the same in the next room over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could still smell Richie on his skin.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie can smell his own blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s been running for what feels like hours, though when he looks at his watch it’s only been about twenty minutes. He has no idea where he is. He’s not worried about that — he’s been able to find his way out of anything, finding his way is as simple as finding north and working from there — but he is a little worried about the wolf. He knows he’s close.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a cut on his temple oozing blood, from a tree branch hitting him hard enough to cut as he ran past. He can feel it drip down his chin and onto the ground as he slows to a walk and continues. He’s still on a path, though this one is older, less frequently travelled by humans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His mouth tastes like copper. He almost wants to reach for his inhaler, but he stops himself. The more he breathes, the bigger his lungs feel, his rib cage expanding and letting in more air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie has never felt more alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another howl rings through the air. It’s much, much closer. Eddie can feel blood and sweat drying on his face, getting sticky, and he wonders if the wolf can smell it. If the wolf is coming for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s not afraid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The flashlight flickers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, real panic flares in Eddie’s chest. He shakes it, and it stabilizes, and before he can catch his breath, a deer bursts out of the brush on the side of the trail. It’s running from something, and a moment later it hops across the path and continues its run through the woods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie stops, and breathes, and a moment later, a roar echoes through his bones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wolf is on the path in front of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Seven feet tall</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Eddie thinks, dazed with shock, as it rises onto its hind legs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thing is pure darkness: a totally black wolf. When his flashlight lands on its face, its eyes glow gold against the dark fur and the less-dark night. Its teeth hang out the sides of its mouth, its tongue dangling and dripping drool to the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s standing like a person, and it’s just looking at Eddie, as his shaking hand points the flashlight at its face. The longer he looks, the less afraid he is, even as he notices more and more terrifying details, revealed by the glimpses of light: each shiny-sharp claw as long as his hand. The shaggy fur hanging off the powerful muscles on its front legs and stomach. The clouds of its breath in the night air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wolf opens its mouth, and Eddie prepares to run, but it doesn’t lunge or bite or even yawn. Just opens it, the tongue flopping around, and closes it again. A few more times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It drops to all fours again, and Eddie remembers the gun as it takes a step closer to him. A step that he almost wants to call </span>
  <em>
    <span>hesitant</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Why would a wolf hesitate? Eddie is a red-blooded mammal who isn’t fighting back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it’s rapidly becoming clear that the wolf is not going to eat him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It steps closer, and closer, and Eddie can smell the gore on its breath, see the red smeared on its fangs. It steps closer and closer until their faces are inches apart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie drops the flashlight on the ground. All he can see, in the light of the moon, is his own reflection in the wolf’s eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wolf licks him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s so unexpected that Eddie doesn’t do anything to stop it. The tongue slides up his cheek and to his hair, leaving a layer of spit that is so gross Eddie is almost worried he’s going to hurl. He stumbles back, and the wolf makes a rumbling noise deep in his chest that he would almost call a laugh if he didn’t know better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wolf steps back, and turns around, and runs away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie is alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s frozen in shock for maybe thirty seconds before he manages to fumble the water bottle off his belt and lean forward to dump it over his face, using half the bottle to scrub the wolf spit off his cheek and out of his hair. When that’s done, his knees have gone a bit weak. He stumbles back and leans against the nearest treat, trying to breathe. Trying to process.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wolf didn’t hurt him. Did that mean the wolf knows him? Can the wolves recognize others in their non-human states? Eddie had assumed, from the stories of them killing their own families, that the answer was no.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he thinks the wolf recognized him, and he thinks he recognized it, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie slides down the tree and onto the ground, and closes his eyes.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>When Eddie opens his eyes again, it’s morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sits up in a panic, fumbling for his watch. It’s just past seven, and the sun has just crept over the horizon. In maybe an hour, his mother will be checking on him, and finding him missing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s also in the middle of the forest, somewhere he’s never been before, with no identifiable landmarks around, but he’s less worried about that. Eddie doesn’t usually get lost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he gathers his things and starts his trek out of the woods, barely paying attention to where he’s going, he goes back to last night. The wolf in the woods. The wolf that recognized him, and that he recognized in return.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows now, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is a werewolf. It’s a wolf and it’s also a person, and whoever that person is, Eddie knows them. And he feels safe around them, too. He hadn’t been afraid of the wolf, even staring down its gleaming teeth and massive claws, knowing it could tear him to pieces as easily as breathing. But it hadn’t, and Eddie had known he was safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie might know the wolf is real, but he has more questions than answers, now.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie manages to climb in his window and back into bed about three minutes before his mom knocks on the door and comes inside a moment later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Morning, Eddie-bear!” she calls, going over to the window and pulling the curtains open. Eddie pulls the blankets over his head, pretending to wince at the light and trying to covertly scrub the remaining dirt off his cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Breakfast in half an hour!” she says, sing-song, and leaves as quickly as she’d come. “Don’t forget your medicine!” she calls behind her as she goes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie slowly pulls the blankets off his face, and stares at the ceiling. For some reason, the mention of </span>
  <em>
    <span>medicine</span>
  </em>
  <span> makes him feel sick to his stomach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a very quick shower and a change of clothes, Eddie feels a little more human. He still feels gross if he thinks about spending a whole night asleep on the forest floor, with bugs and who knows what else out there to crawl all over him, but he has bigger things to think about, honestly. Like who the hell the werewolf is. He keeps turning the question over in his head as he eats rubbery scrambled eggs and limp toast, and swallows down the pile of pills in a little bowl next to his plate. There’s always more around this time of the month, enough that he can’t just take them all at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He starts to feel tired, again, as soon as they hit his stomach. He has a hard time keeping his eyes open as his mother clears away his plate and pats his head like he’s a dog.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You seem so tired, Eddie-bear. Why don’t you stay in today? It looks like rain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It doesn’t, not really, but that doesn’t sound so bad. Eddie nods at and leaves the table without another word. Normally she’d berate him for not saying “I love you,” or thanking her for breakfast, but when Eddie glances back from the doorway, she’s just watching him go with a smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It makes his stomach roll, like he wants to throw up his fake medicine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie doesn’t go back to bed, or back to his room to do something mother-approved like read novels or play with the toy planes she still buys him like she thinks he’s still a child. He waits until he hears the TV click on and her soaps start to play, and then he gets the stepladder out of the closet and brings it to the upstairs corner where the attic door is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s not really supposed to go up here. Or, well, Mommy has never </span>
  <em>
    <span>said</span>
  </em>
  <span> he can’t, but her expression of disapproval speaks volumes when she finds out he’s been up there. “There’s just dust and old things, baby, I don’t see why you’d even want to,” she’d said last time, the time that he found the gun and hid it in his baggy hoodie while she talked to him. “It’s just memories we don’t need.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It doesn’t escape Eddie’s notice that among those memories, she’s counting almost everything about his dad. There’s only one picture of him on display in the whole house, a picture of him and his mom each holding one of Eddie’s hands as he tried to walk as a toddler.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s not entirely sure what he’s looking for, now, but he feels a need to be here, to dig through the dusty old boxes for something. Whatever he’s missing, whatever puzzle piece will make everything make sense.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The distant sounds of the soaps fade away as Eddie climbs up the ladder and pulls on the string light, the bare bulb lighting up the tiny space. There’s boxes everywhere, and in the back corner a bunch of baby things and children’s toys. Eddie asked a couple years ago why she hadn’t sold them, and she’d flipped out at him, telling him they were for his own kids in the future. Eddie hadn’t had the heart to tell her that he had a better chance of going to the moon than willingly having children in this town.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The important boxes are the ones behind the baby toys, the ones marked “Frank” and “Mom and Dad Kaspbrak” and similar things. There’s still a few that Eddie hasn’t opened. He drags a few bigger ones over to the hatch, under the light, and gets to work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most of it is, predictably, not very interesting. The first box with his father’s name has a whole lot of fishing gear: lures and maps and a few hats with </span>
  <em>
    <span>PLEASANT LAKE ‘69</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>BOYS TRIP: GREAT MOOSE LAKE ‘71</span>
  </em>
  <span> and similar. The next box, one of the ones with his grandparents’ names on it, is full of old papers and books and photos. An old recipe book, a photo album of sepia photos from lake trips and church weddings. Nothing terribly interesting, until he sees a small volume at the bottom, right when he’s about to give up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a photo album labeled THE WOODS, smaller than the others — more around the size of a normal book than a picture album — but a bit thicker, too. Eddie pulls it out and blows dust off the cover, and opens it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first page: a map of the woods outside of Derry, with a handful of markings in pen. Eddie doesn’t recognize all of them, but they look vaguely familiar. He realizes, a moment later and with a feeling of sinking dread, that all the marks in fading red are spots that he marked on his own map. Historical werewolf attacks, approximated. There are also marks in black and in blue, in a pattern he can’t determine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unsettled, Eddie turns the page. The first picture there is very old, and black and white; maybe pre-twentieth century. A dirty-faced family stands in front of the woods: a man, a woman, two young boys and a baby in the woman’s arms.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Early settlers</span>
  </em>
  <span> is scrawled across the bottom of the photo. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Derry, ME, 1892: the Kaspbrak family.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>So. Eddie’s family has been here for a while. That’s not necessarily surprising. He can’t really imagine anyone choosing to move here. He examines the photo more, looking for anything else, but it seems to be a relatively normal family photo. There’s a gun slung over the father’s shoulder, which doesn’t seem surprising for a settler family in that era.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie turns the page.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a picture focused on the woman from the photo before, looking older. Her two sons are taller now, and the baby from her arms is a little girl standing at her feet. The husband is gone. The whole family is wearing black and standing in front of a grave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even before he reads the caption, he can guess the context.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Mourning. James Kaspbrak has been shot. 1898.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Shot? Eddie feels like there should be more context, but there isn’t. He carefully pulls the photo out of the album and flips it over, but there’s nothing on the back, either. No further explanation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He puts the photo back and turns the page again. The family is much older now, standing on the porch of a house. The sons each have a gun, the mother is sitting in a rocking chair with a dark veil over her face, and the sister, now a teenager, is leaning against the armchair with a little smile that surprises Eddie in such an old photo. The taller son has his arm around another woman, probably his wife, holding a blurry toddler. Clearly incapable of staying still.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The family. Brother James Jr., his wife Nellie and baby Jane. Mother Eliza. Sister Eden. Brother Edward. 1910.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie turns the page again. The progress of the family unfolds: James and his children, and eventually James and Nellie moved away from Derry to New York. Eden never married and embraced a life of spinsterhood with her “dearest friend, Angeline, whose home and bed she shared with Christlike charity.” (Eddie has some doubts about how </span>
  <em>
    <span>charitable</span>
  </em>
  <span> the whole situation was.) Edward, who seemed to be his ancestor, settled down with a family and a farm, until tragedy struck in the 1930s: Edward’s oldest and beloved son died.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Robert Kaspbrak’s Funeral</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the only caption on that page. Edward, now an older man, sobbing over the body in a casket in the home. The casket was closed. His wife and other children were by his side, including, Eddie assumed, at least one of his grandparents. Eden and Angeline were there too, holding hands, Eden’s other hand resting on the casket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a portrait of tragedy, and when Eddie turned the page, the breath vanished from his lungs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a similar picture, but the room was empty except for Edward and Eden. The casket was open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside was a wolf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A wolf the size of a man, or maybe a teenager; small enough to fit in a normal casket, at least. The head of the wolf protruded out, its nose sticking up in the air, the tongue lolling out. And it seemed to be wrapped in fine fabric from the chest down, but it wasn’t enough to hide the neck. Even in the black and white photo, Eddie could see that there was a violent wound there.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Edward and Eden mourn their brethren</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the caption read.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s family was werewolves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For once, Eddie didn’t stop himself from reaching for his inhaler and shooting the fake medicine down his gasping throat. He was on the verge of a panic attack, black spots crowding the edge of his vision, and he had to put the photo album down and breathe into his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His family had been werewolves for generations. That much was clear, now. So — why wasn’t Eddie? Why had he gone out as a human on the night of a full moon? And why had he been left alone to deal with this, with his mother who obviously couldn’t understand?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie hasn’t ever really missed his father. Or, well, he thinks about the missing hole that his father left. There was nothing to miss about him as a person rather than a figure; Eddie had never known him. But this — this is a question that needs an answer, and Eddie hasn’t felt the longing for his father this strongly in years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he wouldn’t give to sit his father down and ask a few goddamn questions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie waits until he can breathe without feeling a wheeze building up behind his throat, and finishes flipping through the photo album. It ends around his father’s birth and doesn’t contain any more revelations. A quick poke around the rest of the box reveals nothing else interesting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Knowing the evidence that’s up here, now, Eddie truly does not want his mother to find him up here, so he doesn’t look for anything else. He packs everything up, puts it back, and climbs back down and goes back to his room, flopping down on his bed and staring at the ceiling. It occurs to him that the silver bullets must have something to do with this, but he doesn’t want to look at the gun again right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His head is still whirling and full of questions. Mainly about himself. Mainly </span>
  <em>
    <span>am I a werewolf</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and that’s a question he has never expected to need to ask himself. The evidence has always seemed clear that he isn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the evidence in the attic, stuffed away like a shameful secret, says something else. And Eddie knows, down to his bones, that it’s something passed down through his family. That the code for werewolfism is buried somewhere in his DNA or brain or wherever it’s stored. It explains why he was compelled to go out in the woods to find the werewolf when he heard about it, and why the werewolf didn’t kill him. Why he felt such a strange sense of kinsmanship with the wolf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So. Maybe Eddie </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> a werewolf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fact that he’s seriously considering it is probably evidence enough that he’s gone off the deep end. Eddie rolls over and presses his face into the pillow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s too much information to process in the space of less than a day. He needs to deal with the fact that werewolves are real at all before considering that he might be one of them, somehow.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie doesn’t go out again that night — he has all the information that he needs, there’s no reason to — but he goes out on the back porch for a bit around eleven at night, and tells his mother he just needs some air before he goes to bed. He stares up at the moon, just barely not full, and waits until he hears a howl. It doesn’t take long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the howl fades into the distance, Eddie stares into the blackness until his eyes hurt, and goes back inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That night, he dreams of running and running and running, his lungs never getting tired and his feet barely touching the ground.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>The next morning, when his mother sets out his tray of pills, Eddie hides them under his tongue and spits them out in the toilet. They dissolve into candy-pink foam, and disappear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels like a shift somewhere deep inside him, as he rinses the sugary remnants out of his mouth. He’s peeling away the layers of himself, the layers that have been built up around him against his will, and figuring out what’s underneath.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>On his walk to school, Eddie starts thinking about the werewolf in the woods again. He’s been a bit distracted by the realization of his own part in this, but it doesn’t actually answer the question he was asking in the first place: who is the wolf? They were familiar to him, he’s sure of it, and he thinks they recognized him. Both as a fellow wolf and as a person.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It could be anyone, really, if he thinks about it like that. He knows a lot of people. But his gut — and, well, maybe he should trust that, considering it led him out to the woods in the first place — is telling him it’s closer than that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a little exciting, really. There’s still a mystery to figure out. And if he uses it to distract from questions about his own part in this, that’s his right.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sees Richie chaining up his bike as he approaches the school, and after a glance at his watch to ensure he has time, he goes over to Richie, who jumps up and pulls off his Walkman headphones as Eddie approaches. Richie looks tired, he notices. He knows Richie doesn’t sleep as much as he should — too many video games and a nocturnal sleep cycle — and he always has the urge to make Richie go back to bed when he sees him this early in the morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How was your weekend?” Richie asks, and then stops, going completely still, looking Eddie up and down with an entirely unreadable expression.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine,” Eddie says after a moment. He’s never seen Richie look like this. He almost looks panicked, his eyes darting back and forth between Eddie and the school and his bike like he’s considering making a run for it. “Uh — you okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great. Peachy. Look, Eds—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bell rings. The crowd around them, that Eddie had almost entirely tuned out, stops milling around and starts to go inside. Eddie stays still, and so does Richie, who has stopped speaking and gone pale. He won’t look Eddie in the eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks scared.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you okay?” Eddie asks again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh,” Richie says, and pushes past him, into the school. Eddie weighs the consequences of being late against letting Richie walk away from him while being this fucking weird, and decides it’s worth it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He follows Richie inside, and when he walks past the door of the boy’s bathroom, Eddie grabs his wrist and pulls him inside. Richie lets out an indignant squawk as Eddie drags him into the corner and glares up at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stupid growth spurt. Eddie hates having to crane his neck to look at Richie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is your </span>
  <em>
    <span>problem</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Eddie snaps, crossing his arms and attempting intimidation. One of their classmates is washing his hands at the sink, not giving them a second glance. Eddie’s pretty sure everyone at Derry High is aware that he and Richie are usually caught up in their own world and ignoring everyone else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t do this,” Richie says. “Come on, Eds, I have class—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eds</span>
  </em>
  <span> me when you’re being so fucking weird!” Richie rolls his eyes and tries to walk out again, and now Eddie has gone from irritated to actually upset, because they don’t do this. Sure, they don’t usually confront each other about stuff like this, but usually it’s not a problem in the first place. Usually Richie isn’t actively trying to </span>
  <em>
    <span>go to class</span>
  </em>
  <span> to get away from him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not being weird,” Richie says weakly. The door opens and closes. They’re alone in the bathroom. Distantly, the second bell rings. They’re officially late for class, which Eddie basically never is, but oh well. This is more important.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me what’s going on,” Eddie says, trying for more intimidation. Maybe it’s even working. He’s usually pretty good at getting Richie to do what he wants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie scrubs his hands over his face, jostling his glasses as he pushes underneath them. In the fluorescent light, he looks more tired than Eddie can remember seeing him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A thought pops into Eddie’s head, and he almost rejects it immediately. It’s ridiculous. It makes no sense, or perfect sense, or both.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Were you in the woods?” he asks before his brain can catch up to his mouth and stop him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie deflates. All the fight goes out of him, and he leans against the bathroom wall, closing his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goddamn it,” he says, and pounds his fist against the wall. Once, twice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was you,” Eddie says. Richie opens his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re not the same colour, but they’re the same eyes as the wolf.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie thinks that’s it, that he got what he needed out of Richie. Until Richie says, “I recognized you. I could smell it. You’re like me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s veins flood with adrenaline. When he looks down at his hands, they’re shaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” he says, and sits down heavily on the floor, diagonally across the wall from where Richie is leaning. Richie slides down and joins him on the floor. The filthy, disgusting bathroom floor, but at least it was probably cleaned overnight. Eddie tells himself that so he doesn’t have another reason to hyperventilate and reach for his inhaler.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This isn’t new, exactly — Eddie had guessed. It made sense with what he knew. But now he </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie is a werewolf, and for some reason, Richie is too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie doesn’t realize he’s wheezing until Richie’s hand settles on his knee. He looks up at Richie, noticing, again, how tired he looks — makes sense, if he didn’t sleep for an entire weekend night. “Do you have your inhaler?” Richie asks, and Eddie shakes his head. It’s not true — it’s still in his fanny pack — but he’s not going to pull it out. He’s done with fake medicine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He fumbles to cover Richie’s hand with his own, on top of his knee. Richie’s hand is cold and bony and dry in the cold weather, and Eddie holds on long enough that it starts to warm up against his own skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they’ve been sitting there long enough to make it awkward — except it’s not, it’s never awkward between them, somehow — Richie says, weakly, “I just realized what a creep I sound like. I could smell you, Jesus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie snorts. “I mean, I can smell you. Too much axe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up.” Richie’s hand, where it rests under Eddie’s, shoves his knee gently. “But really — okay, I know this is super weird—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not as weird as a murderer clown, and we already did that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. Well. I usually can’t remember anything, right? I realized I was killing, like woodland creatures, because when I’m… like that, I just want to eat. But I couldn’t actually remember it. I woke up with blood on my hands and in my mouth and nothing else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gross.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. But my point is — I remember seeing you. I didn’t recognize you, but I knew you were like me, but you weren’t transformed, and it didn’t make any sense. On the full moon, it just… happens.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I don’t know why.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can… figure it out?” Richie smiles at him, that awkward, hidden-teeth smile that he’s been doing since he got his braces. “Anyway. I didn’t actually know it was, you know, you, but when you got here this morning, I could smell you. It was the same.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ugh.” Eddie wonders if it’s normal that Richie’s hand is still blanketed between his hand and his knee. But Richie’s not moving, so he’s not going to move, either. “Like… what could you smell?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not bad or anything,” Richie says. “It’s just — I know what you smell like? Ever since this happened, I’ve been able to smell things way more. I know when my parents left by how fresh their smell is in the house, and I can tell when someone is getting sick, because they smell like themselves, but… kinda wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. What do you mean, since this happened? What happened?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eds, don’t you know anything about werewolves?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s not going to mention his recent delve into historical research. He’s sure that Richie just means horror movies. “Of course I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re such a loser. Someone bit me. I mean, didn’t it happen to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Eddie says. “I think — this is going to sound weird, but I was looking through some old photo albums, and I think I got it from my dad and his family.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh. Is that why you don’t transform?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe. But sorry, go back — someone bit you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I was walking home a few months ago and I got tackled by what I thought was a big dog and it took a chunk out of my arm. I was going to go to the doctor in the morning, but by then, it was gone. I thought it was a dream, until — well. Until the next full moon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie can’t really imagine. Maybe he should be able to — maybe he’s going to have to, at some point — but it still horrifies him: the idea of his body changing shape, turning into something that he can’t control or fight against. It’s horrifying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Maybe there’s a part of him that likes the idea of being out of control. Maybe. But he’s keeping that part of him locked down.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Eddie says. “So you got bitten by… someone. Maybe they were just passing through?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or they learned how to control their shifting,” Richie says. He finally pulls his hand off Eddie’s knee, and Eddie’s knee and palm both tingle where they had been touching. “I hope I can do that, eventually, but I don’t know how. I’ve been kind of freaking out. I didn’t know if I was going to hurt someone, or if there was any way to control it.” He laughs weakly, running his hands through his hair. “I’m glad you know. I’m glad I’m not alone in this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You never were,” Eddie says. Richie blinks, and then smiles at him. A real smile. Teeth and all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I guess not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie grabs his hand and squeezes it. He regrets it immediately, because he’s way too close, he can smell Richie’s shampoo and feel the thudding, steady rhythm of his heartbeat in his wrist, but he can’t make himself let go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll figure it out together.”</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>As it turns out, they’ve missed almost half of their first classes. Eddie is never late, so it doesn’t really matter that he has one tardy; Richie is late as a matter of course, so it’s not a big deal on his end, either. After school, Richie walks his bike back to his house with Eddie by his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie wasn’t going to tell him about the werewolf research, but it actually seems relevant now, and if nothing else, he’s used to Richie making fun of him. But as he explains his findings on the walk, Richie doesn’t, even as he gets into the nerdier details like going to the library for microfiches.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Richie says as they get to his house and drop their bikes in the yard, “is there a cure?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie shrugs. “Not that I could find.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess you wouldn’t find that in newspapers. But not in the family stuff, either? The stuff in your attic?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think they wanted a cure,” Eddie says as Richie unlocks the door. “Wait, are your parents home?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, don’t worry about it.” Richie kicks his shoes into the corner, and Eddie places his on the edge of the mat, out of the way, before following Richie to the kitchen. There’s a hole in the heel of Richie’s sock, and he can’t stop watching it until Richie turns the corner into the kitchen. He’s transfixed with the way Richie moves, and he doesn’t even know why, really.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe because they share a secret now. Maybe because he’s never felt more safe than he did on the floor of that bathroom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t know, but he likes this feeling, of being safe and strong at the same time. Those two things have always been separate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Eddie says, “how do you want to figure this out? Also, do you only turn on the full moon, or what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know,” Richie says, leaning against the kitchen island. “I know what it feels like when I’m about to turn, so I’ve been avoiding stuff that makes me feel that way. High blood pressure, panic, heart racing, I don’t know. It has to be really extreme to start feeling like I’m about to transform.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What does that feel like?” Eddie finds himself trying to imagine it, like he could slip into Richie’s skin. He leans against the island across from Richie. Their hands are inches apart on the linoleum counter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie closes his eyes. “It’s like… my whole body is shaking. My skin starts to feel too tight, and I can feel my insides moving, and then everything goes black.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie winces. “That sounds…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, it doesn’t hurt. Much. It’s more like the feeling of changing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wow, that’s useful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t worry, Eds, someday you’ll have hair on your chest and balls and you’ll get to do this too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off,” Eddie says, knowing he’s blushing and hating himself for it. And hating himself for wondering just where Richie has hair now. “Do you have any theories on why I haven’t been changing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe you just didn’t notice. Does your mom still tuck you in at seven on the dot?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off,” Eddie says, with a little more intensity. He doesn’t want to think about his mom right now, even a little bit. “Really.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie shrugs. “I mean, I haven’t been able to stop it on a full moon, and it’s happened a few times since the first one. Maybe it’s, like… wolfsbane.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What? Isn’t that some movie bullshit?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re the research freak, not me. But if werewolves are real, I feel like some other things might be real, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe.” Eddie thinks, suddenly, of the pills. The sugary crunch, the pink foam in the toilet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It doesn’t mean anything, of course it doesn’t, but he can’t get his mind off of them. Of how strong he felt, the week he went to Richie’s and didn’t take a single one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(He’s not going to check if that was a full moon week, he’s not — but oh. He remembers holding Richie in the kitchen and looking out the window at the narrow sliver of moon. Not a full moon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie’s heart beating against his cheek, only a few feet from where they are now.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll figure it out,” Richie says, and his hand crosses the impossible gulf between theirs on the counter, and takes Eddie’s. Eddie looks down at their entwined hands and feels, for a moment, like anything is possible.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>They talk a lot of big ideas, but ultimately they’re just two teenagers. There’s not a lot they can actually do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie stops taking the pills. He doesn’t tell Richie for the first week, but the next Monday, after two days apart, Richie’s eyes visibly widen when Eddie sits down next to him in class. He scribbles a note and passes it to Eddie when they’re supposed to be doing a pop quiz.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What did you do???? You smell just like a wolf. NOT IN A WEIRD WAY I CAN JUST TELL THAT YOU’RE LIKE ME!!!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie rolls his eyes at the phrasing, but he also feels a thrill of excitement. Maybe it wasn’t a wild, implausible theory after all. Maybe they aren’t just placebos.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I stopped taking my mom’s pills</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>When Richie reads the note, he waves to get Eddie’s attention and mouths “Nice!” at him with two big thumbs-up. Eddie rolls his eyes again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Weird, she didn’t tell me about that last night,” Richie says when he catches up to Eddie during the passing period. “Was it a big fight, or—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I’m pretending to take them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sneaky Eds!” Richie says with a grin, shoving him a little. Eddie doesn’t smile. He doesn’t. “Good for you, standing up to the man in secret. Sabotaging her plans.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just like I sabotaged your mom’s birth control pills,” Eddie says in a monotone, and Richie gasps so loudly that a few people turn to look. He slaps his hand over his heart with a cry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eddie, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>wound</span>
  </em>
  <span> me, </span>
  <em>
    <span>deeply—</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off,” Eddie says. He’s laughing now. There’s no point in denying it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After school, when they can actually talk about it, Richie is hopeful. “This has to mean it’s wolfsbane, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> to mean anything,” Eddie says. They can only talk on the way to Eddie’s house today, because his mom wants him home for some reason or other. “We don’t know anything yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It does make the most sense, though, which Eddie isn’t sure he wants to think about. If it’s true, that means his mother knows, and has known for long enough to keep poisoning him his whole life to keep him contained. To keep him from knowing who he really is.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe she just didn’t want to deal with a werewolf</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the overly-defensive part of Eddie’s brain points out. The part that still wants to believe that Mommy only wants what’s best for him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe she knew you would kill people and wanted to spare you the guilt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe. But his dad has to have relatives. His dad must have had a way of dealing, because Eddie’s fairly certain now that he was a werewolf, too, and there weren’t this many full-moon-related maulings back before he died. And he’s pretty sure there wouldn’t be a big happy Kaspbrak family line if they all killed a bunch of people once a month.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There must be a way to control it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. They just have to find it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh, Eds?” Richie says, waving a hand in front of his face. Eddie blinks. He hadn’t realized he’d vanished into his own head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re here.” They are, in fact, standing in front of Eddie’s house. “See you tomorrow?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Eddie waves, and he can feel Richie watching him as he walks up the path.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A little under three weeks until the full moon, he realizes as he opens the front door. Whatever this is, they have that long to figure it out.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie is starting to feel… different.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s almost sure he’s not imagining it. Images seem sharper at the corners. His nose picks up more — not everything, thank god, he’s still in a high school every day — but smaller details. The smell of cigarette smoke in Bev’s hair when she sits next to him and moves her head too fast. A woman’s perfume on his older male English teacher… matching the perfume of his younger, married, math teacher. He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, until Richie cracks a joke about the English teacher having an affair, and he asks if he knows because of his… </span>
  <em>
    <span>senses</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Richie says casually. “He smells like her. I think they get to the school early to fuck in the closets or something.” Richie wiggles his eyebrows at Eddie suggestively, and Eddie winces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ew.” Eddie personally thinks some light necking is more likely, but he’d rather drop the topic completely. It’s enough to prove that it’s not entirely in his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One night, as his mother watches her soaps, Eddie opens the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. It has a different stock than the bathroom medicine cabinet (and some repeats of the most important things — Advil, Benadryl, Xanax) and it’s where his mother doles out his daily medication from, into little medicine trays for a week at a time. Eddie’s never paid much attention to the bottles, but he knows what they look like, sort of. They’re right at the top.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pulls them down. They’re unmarked, sturdy, dark green glass jars. Not surprising, if they’ve been the same ones for a while. Eddie opens the first one he pulls down. It’s the pink pills. The second jar has smaller white ones. There are a couple more, but Eddie doesn’t bother looking, just puts the jars back the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It should be the end of it, but as Eddie is closing the cupboard, he spots a pile of junk mail on the table. His mother is terrible about taking the final step of moving piles of recycling to the actual recycling, so Eddie goes and grabs it, and brings it to the hall closet that has the recycling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stops, looking down into it, the junk mail still in his hand. A bag clearly reading </span>
  <em>
    <span>Keene’s Pharmaceuticals</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie throws the junk mail in and grabs the bag. It’s empty, but he digs around it, and unearths a plastic bottle. A second.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>KASPBRAK, EDWARD. His medication.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He only finds two, and he shoves them in his pocket and closes the closet door quickly, before his mother notices. He retreats back in the kitchen, and listens for the sound of the soaps. It’s still on. If the ads start and she decides to get a snack, he’ll have some warning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first bottle says it contains “Specialized Medication”. At the bottom, it reads:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For treatment of Psychosomatic Illnesses. Take as needed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. It doesn’t say “sugar pills”, but it’s certainly not hiding anything. Eddie pushes it aside, and checks the second bottle.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Aconite Extract</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>For control of the baser instincts.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>First of all, Eddie has to wonder why this pharmacy in the nineties is still labelling medicine like it’s the middle ages. Second of all… </span>
  <em>
    <span>aconite</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He knows that word from somewhere. He has no idea where. He opens the bottle, and there’s a pink film over the inside. He runs his finger along the rim and pulls it back out, staring at the pink dust.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eddie-bear?” his mother calls from the living room. “Could you get me another tea, darling?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie jumps, and quickly closes the bottle again, shoving it back in his pocket. “Sure, Mommy!” he calls back, and starts the electric kettle. As it starts to squeal, he slips out to put the bottles back in the recycling, the kettle masking the sound of the closet door opening again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie keeps turning the word over in his head. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Aconite</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>He remembers at some point later that night. At some point during his research, he’d wondered if wolfsbane was real, and looked it up. Apparently it is, and it has other names, too. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Aconitum napellus</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Monkshood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aconite.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s more than just a fictional werewolf killer, too: it’s deeply poisonous. And Eddie has been swallowing it dutifully, every day, for years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That night, he dreams of pale, harsh hands forcing flowers down his throat, choking him. His mouth foams, dripping down his chin, as the poison paralyzes him, shuts down his internal organs, takes him apart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Swallow your medicine, Eddie-bear,” his mother croons, but he can’t see her. Everything has gone dark. His eyes have been eaten by the poison.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie goes to Richie’s house for a sleepover that weekend.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We need to figure this out,” he says over the phone. Richie had tentatively agreed at school, but now he’s trying to back out, and Eddie is done with him being dramatic. “Before — that day, right? The deadline.” He says the last word a bit louder, because he can practically feel his mother listening in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh-huh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve done my part on the project,” Eddie says, adding a bit of a whine to his voice. It actually works surprisingly well on Richie. “We can put the rest together and then we can hang out. Watch movies. Whatever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ugh,” Richie groans, and Eddie grins. He knows he’s won. “Fine. Fine! Come on over and we’ll do the… project.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See you in a few,” Eddie says, and hangs up. When he turns away, his mother is looking at him, head tilted and mouth pursed, mildly disapproving.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” she asks. “It’s getting cold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll wear my coat and my hat, Mommy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And your safety vest?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie grimaces. He’s sure it’s true that a safety vest makes a car less likely to hit him, but he still feels like an idiot wearing one. But at this point, he doesn’t want to do anything to make her unhappy with him. “Yeah, Mommy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good boy.” Eddie lets her kiss his cheek. He can smell her shampoo and her soap and a strange medicinal smell that never goes away. Maybe it’s her, or maybe it’s the house, but it’s always stronger around her. It makes him feel sicker with just a whiff. “Be safe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Always, Mommy.”</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Richie’s parents are working late, so they have the house to themselves when they set up in the basement. Eddie put some of the aconite pills in another bottle to bring over, and he puts on a pair of latex gloves before he takes one out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie had been rolling his eyes at Eddie’s preparedness — </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Seriously, dude?” “It’s so fucking poisonous, you have no idea—” “You’ve been taking them once a day for years!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> — but as he lifts it between his gloved fingers, Richie’s eyes widen. He recoils a little from the tiny pink pill in Eddie’s hand, like it has an aura of danger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck,” Richie says. “That’s… all my senses are telling me to run.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So it really is… wolfsbane, or whatever?” Eddie asks. It looks so innocuous in the dim basement light, even knowing what he does about it. It’s hard to believe that something he’s taken so many times could be poison.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. You must have a massive buildup. Maybe it’ll just take some time to… get out of your system.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right.” Eddie rolls the pill between his fingers, looking at the fine pink dust on the gloves. “I’m trying not to even put it in my mouth anymore, just in my hand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good idea. I don’t think you should be anywhere near that. No wonder you’re… like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie laughs reflexively. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Like that</span>
  </em>
  <span>? Wow, okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know what I mean. Like, I can tell you’re like me, but it’s kinda muted, or distant. I don’t know.” Richie shivers. The basement isn’t even cold, and Richie runs hot; Eddie can feel it from the distance between them, sitting a couple feet apart on Richie’s couch. “Can you put it away? I don’t like how it makes me feel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure.” Eddie puts it back and peels off his gloves, shoving them in the same bottle for good measure. As soon as the lid is screwed back on, Richie looks visibly relieved, leaning back against the couch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Richie says, “let’s review. Wolfsbane is bad. Silver bullets?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I brought some into the woods that night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, to kill me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just in case!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie narrows his eyes. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Sure</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up. I could touch the silver and it was in with my dad’s stuff, so maybe it’s not true.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My mom has some silver jewelry,” Richie muses. “I can check it out later.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Put it on the list.” Eddie turns on the couch, pulling his knees up next to him. They’re so close he can see Richie’s eyes behind his glasses, wide and a little nervous. Richie swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So… transforming.” He’s so close he can feel Richie’s breathing against him. “When you get angry, or your heart rate goes up, you feel it coming on?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Richie’s words are almost a whisper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay.” Eddie slaps him. Hard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sound echoes around the basement, and Richie’s face is turned into the couch cushions, not moving. Eddie has no idea what the hell he was thinking. They’re inside, he has nowhere to run — he has the pill, but that’s in his pocket, sealed away—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie growls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It comes from low in his throat, loud and violent, like a chainsaw ripping to life. Richie’s hands are curled into the couch cushions, and as Eddie watches, he can see the skin rippling, like the bones beneath are shifting. When Richie flexes his fingers, Eddie can see claws coming out. In and out, in and out, as Richie tries to hold back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He should be running. Especially as Richie turns to him, breathing hard, the growling continuing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Richie,” he says, and a growl is cut off by a whine as Richie stumbles off the couch, like he’s trying to escape. It looks like his bones are trying to reform under his skin. “Richie.” He climbs down on the floor next to Richie, where he’s pressing his forehead into the ground, whining.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hair is growing in and out of his face at dizzying speeds. Richie is fighting it, desperately, when his body just wants to shift.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Focus on me,” Eddie says, and takes Richie’s face in his hands, forcing eye contact. Richie’s glasses fell off at some point, and his eyes are rapidly shifting from blue to glowing gold and back again. Richie opens his mouth and Eddie can see his teeth mutating, shifting, growing longer and retracting again. When his canines are long and sharp, Richie’s normal, human tongue moves out and gets cut. Blood dribbles down his chin and he writhes in Eddie’s hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Focus,” Eddie says again, panic starting to take over despite his confidence. He hadn’t thought this through at all. Richie’s not going to hurt him, but what if he bursts out of the house, destroying it? What if he kills someone else?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie’s hand grabs on to Eddie’s thigh and his nails dig in. Eddie can feel his skin being punctured through his jeans, the blood running down his knee.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t know what to do, so he closes his eyes and holds Richie’s face tighter, the sensation of growing and vanishing black fur disturbing under his palms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He kisses Richie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It tastes like Richie’s blood, like cigarettes and food and the way Richie smells. Eddie stole one of his hoodies and fell asleep curled around it, once; kissing Richie feels like that. It’s him. His mouth is warm, his teeth are sharp until they aren’t, their shared blood is running down Eddie’s chin, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie keeps kissing him until his bones stop shifting in his skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he pulls away, Richie is staring at him in open shock. His mouth has bloody smudges, like red lipstick, and Eddie reaches up to wipe it away on instinct. Richie lets him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was that?” Richie asks, weakly, after a long moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Control,” Eddie says. He has to look away; Richie’s gaze hurts too much. “We stopped it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You stopped me,” Richie says. “And I — I didn’t want to turn, but I felt like I was in control, when you touched me. I could hear your voice and recognize it. Like you were anchoring me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe you could turn and still control yourself,” Eddie says hopefully. He doesn’t want to think about the kiss, because if Richie is just going to ignore it, that’s worse than if it never happened at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe. Eds…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?” Eddie asks when it becomes clear Richie is waiting for a response. He looks up, and he’s never seen a look like that on Richie’s face before. Somewhere between hope and terror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie kisses him, this time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie kisses him back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It still tastes like blood, and Eddie doesn’t care at all. He pushes in closer, one hand tangled in Richie’s hair and the other on his chest, feeling his heart pounding against him. Richie’s hands fall to his waist, pulling Eddie half into his lap, and Eddie goes. He feels like his heart is going to burst.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He never, ever wants to stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Richie finally pulls away, they’re both breathing hard. Eddie doesn’t resist the urge to wipe a bit of blood off Richie’s face with his thumb, and Richie smiles wider than Eddie has ever seen before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie never wants to stop kissing him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re going to figure this out. They’re going to be okay. They have each other.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>Eddie keeps feeling stronger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He starts to gather the wolfsbane pills in a plastic bag in the morning, keeping them away from his skin. His senses are improving. When he wakes up at night, he can see just a little more in the faint light; he’s learning to pick scents apart. Richie seems to notice, too, and tells him a few times that he’s getting… more wolf-like. Eddie’s not quite sure what Richie means by that, until one day, a few days after the kiss, Richie starts getting angry during class.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie can smell it. The anger rises off him and it changes the scent of Richie’s sweat, of Richie himself. And there’s something under there that Eddie recognizes as </span>
  <em>
    <span>like him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, as his kin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can also hear Richie’s heartbeat as it speeds up and up and up, and he looks down and whispers, “I wish I could kiss you right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Richie goes entirely still, and Eddie can smell the embarrassment and quiet happiness that he feels, and can see the flush rising up the back of his neck. His heartbeat slows down again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crisis averted, and more importantly: Eddie is figuring this out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he’s kissing Richie. That’s still new. They haven’t really talked about it, choosing instead to talk about what they’re going to do for the next full moon. But they’re still kissing, and Eddie grabs Richie’s hand sometimes and holds on, and when they’re alone sometimes he buries his face in Richie’s shoulder and inhales and feels like he’s finally home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s still new and strange, but Eddie really, really likes it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This full moon is on a school night, which normally wouldn’t grant Eddie a sleepover, but Eddie spends an entire week in the leadup trying to make it work. He finally gets his mom to relent after pretending to have a minor meltdown about all the schoolwork he and Richie have to do, and she lets him go over early that evening, with a warning to stay inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The full moon is dangerous, sweetheart,” she says, looking at him nervously. “You never know what’s out there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie is pretty sure Richie is the most dangerous thing in the woods, and if he’s ever been sure of anything, he’s sure Richie would never, ever hurt him. “Okay, Mommy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sun is setting as Eddie makes his way to Richie’s house, and he feels… different. Even sharper than before, everything around him limned in silver and flashing before his eyes. He can hear every crunch of gravel under his feet, every rustling leaf and scampering animal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks down at his hands and wonders if he’ll be aware enough to look down at them when they’ve turned into paws, massive and clawed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On Richie’s end, he somehow finagled a night off for his parents, and as Eddie is taking off his shoes at the door — he’s finally broken his habit of knocking, after too many lighthearted lectures — they’re on their way out to the restaurant. Maggie has pulled her curls up on top of her head and is wearing a dress that is probably a bit too light for the cold outside, and as she passes Eddie with a wave and a smile, he can smell soap and perfume and relaxed excitement. Went ruffles Eddie’s hair, winks at him in a way that makes Eddie wonder just what he knows about his son’s relationship status, and follows Maggie out the door. As she steps down the stairs, he reaches around her waist to make sure she doesn’t slip, and the contentment emanating off of them makes Eddie feel almost hopeful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s never really paid attention to that kind of quiet love, and he certainly doesn’t see it in his own house. But as Richie shouts, “Hey, asshole, I have leftovers from your mom,” from the kitchen, Eddie can almost imagine it for the two of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, it won’t be that kind of quiet, at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re clearly not from my mom,” Eddie says when he gets into the kitchen and sits down at the island. “It smells too good to be something she cooked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wow, Eds, I’m going to tell her you said that.” Eddie rolls his eyes as Richie takes the pot of leftover stew off the stove and spoons it into two bowls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is this a good idea?” Eddie asks as Richie slides him a bowl. It’s a hearty stew, full of potatoes and chunks of beef. “Are we going to be… eating?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie shrugs as he sits down next to Eddie with his own bowl. “I don’t know if I eat while I’m wolfed out, but I’m always hungry when I turn back. Might as well load up before we go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess running around the woods probably burns a lot of calories.” Eddie shrugs and starts eating. He’s sure his mom would tell him it has too much sodium and carbs and it’s too heavy for his delicate stomach, but clearly she’s not trustworthy on matters of his health.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Richie says when they're done eating and he’s washing up, “you’ll feel it start to come on when it’s close. Want to go hang out outside?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s going to happen to my clothes?” Eddie asks, getting up and going over to stand next to  Richie by the sink.. He’s had ages to think about this, but somehow he hasn’t, and his stomach is crawling with nerves over all the unknowns. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten the stew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Weird shit. They vanish and you wake up wearing them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Really?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, dumbass. Take them off when you feel it coming on.” Richie puts the last bowl in the drying rack and dries his hands off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right.” Eddie rubs at the back of his neck. What if — what if he kills someone? What if Richie can’t stop him? What if—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eddie, calm down.” Richie takes Eddie’s cheek in his hand, and it’s so unexpected that Eddie freezes, looking up at him. His hand is still a bit wet from washing, and it’s warm against his skin. Richie looks calm and steady, which is so entirely un-Richie-like that it’s almost disorienting. But it does make him feel a little calmer as he listens to Richie’s slow breaths and heartbeat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” Eddie mutters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay,” Richie says, and he ducks down to brush his lips against Eddie’s before going red and stepping away. Neither of them are used to it. Eddie touches his lips, the taste of Richie still on them, and steps forward to pull Richie into another kiss. And another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ends up pushing Richie against the sink, hands buried in Richie’s hair, Richie’s hands on his waist. He keeps his eyes closed and keeps kissing Richie until his lips are almost numb, until he feels safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he steps away, the sky out the window is purple and red, and he can see the moon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s almost time,” he says, awed, and Richie grins, taking his hand and lifting it to his mouth to kiss the palm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go outside.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not the first time Eddie has seen Richie naked, but this is something different, stripping down in Richie’s backyard and stacking their clothes neatly on the porch out of sight. And it’s different now that they’re… together, or whatever it is. He wants to touch the planes of Richie’s stomach, is driven to distraction by the hair on his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sits down on the grass, somehow not shivering despite knowing it’s dipping somewhere below freezing, and looks up at the sky, as the sunlight slowly fades out and is replaced by stars.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you feel it?” Richie asks softly. He’s flopped out on the ground next to Eddie, looking extremely naked and also strangely vulnerable without his glasses. He grins up at Eddie from flat on his back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eddie’s about to kick him or make a joke when he realizes that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> feel it. It’s dark, but everything around him is visible. His skin feels like it’s vibrating, barely holding in his bones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Focus on me,” Richie says, and everything else falls away. Eddie reaches out and takes Richie’s hand, holding on tight, and everything starts to change.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hurts, because his entire body is being reformed within his skin, but not as much as Eddie expected. Everything falls away, vision and sight and sound, as his body reshapes itself. He can only sense brief flashes: Richie saying his name, looking down and seeing his clawed hand holding Richie’s still-human one, the claws drawing blood and the scent of iron in his nose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he’s a wolf, and so is Richie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, he won’t really be able to explain it in words. He’s aware, in some ways. He knows who Richie is, and all he really wants to do is run through the woods until his legs are tired, by Richie’s side. He’s hungry, in a way he never feels as a human, but he pushes it down, tackling Richie instead and pinning him down, play-fighting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night is a blur of images and running and Richie, always beside him, right there. By the time he starts to see the sun on the horizon and they make their way back to Richie’s house, loping through the woods. He’s not sure how to turn back, so he flops on his belly in Richie’s backyard, noticing a light dusting of snow sticking to his fur as he rolls onto his back. It feels good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Richie lies down beside him, and licks his face, and Eddie bites at him, catching one pointed ear. Richie yips and Eddie buries his nose in the undisturbed snow, and closes his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he opens them again, he’s human.</span>
</p><p>★☾</p><p>
  <span>All Eddie wants to do is sleep, so he does. He calls in sick from Richie’s house and decides he’ll deal with his mom later, and changes into some sweatpants he brought just in case. It’s barely six in the morning and Richie’s parents are still sleeping as they creep back into Richie’s bedroom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They don’t need to talk about it. Eddie crawls into Richie’s bed and Richie climbs in next to him, and they fall asleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they wake up again, it’s fully snowing. It’s just past ten, and somewhere downstairs, Eddie can hear a radio. He listens just long enough to hear the end of a song and the announcement that school is cancelled for the snow anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No need to get up. He burrows in closer to Richie, and Richie pulls him closer in his sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time, he thinks he falls asleep smiling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>★☾</span>
</p>
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